Wanda James, the Colorado cannabis entrepreneur and longtime political activist, said she is running for Congress because she believes voters have grown tired of stagnant leadership in Washington.
Speaking with Karen Hunter on SiriusXM Urban View’s “The Karen Hunter Show,” James said she entered the race for Colorado’s 1st Congressional District after concluding that the incumbent Democrat, who has represented the district for three decades, was no longer delivering results.
“I’m running against a 30-year incumbent who has passed two bills in 30 years and has not been very effective,” James explained. “It’s time to make a change.”
James, who owns one of the country’s first Black-owned cannabis dispensaries and serves on the University of Colorado Board of Regents, cast herself as a candidate shaped more by business and community organizing than by politics.
“Because I am bringing lived experience to this seat,” she said. “We have now been in business with cannabis for 17 years. My husband has owned six restaurants. We deal with policy, we deal with marketing, we deal with employee issues.” Throughout the interview, James argued that elected officials have become detached from the people they represent.
“We have created this weird class of elected people that live in this golden dome and make rules based on things that they don’t even know what they’re talking about,” she said.
Asked about the greatest obstacle facing her campaign, James answered immediately: money.
“This is a money game,” she shared, adding that Black candidates often find themselves dependent on political donors and consultants who are disconnected from the communities that first supported them. “The minute that you cut the line from the people who got you there and the folks who have been in your corner, the minute that they are not the major people around you is the minute that you start to have bigger problems.”
James said that, if elected, she would make voting rights her first priority in Congress.
“The first thing we’re going to talk about is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,” she revealed. “If we ain’t got voting, then we don’t have anything.”
Watch the full clip below.
